Fragments from the life of a Direct Marketing Operative aka a leaflet monkey. Interspersed with current affairs, feminism, atheism and swearing.

Thursday, 5 April 2012

Thoughts on Leaflets

The Paranoid Client, for all his faults, had nice leaflets. Lovely 3rd-of-A4 size on standard-weight card, easy to carry, easy to slip through even those annoying 50s letterboxes that you'd barely get a mouse to fart through. Fatty the Food Issues client has nice postcard-sized ones which are easy to carry, and as his drop runs are the shortest of the lot, I can actually just go and do a run with a handbag rather than the Big Lolloping Leaflet Bag.
I had thought that the worst sort of leaflet to have was the a-5 photocopy on ordinary paper, that luckily I rarely get these days. Those were a plague because they tore so easily and scrumpled up in an unprofessional fashion, even with only mildly bitey letterboxes (have I done an entire post yet about how much I hate brush-filled ones? Filaments always go up my fingernails and stab viciously, the letterbox itself jams for 30 seconds then falls back into place with a thunderous crash just as I'm departing... actually I will do a whole rant about those later). But that was before today, and the new client, who can be known as the Rentals Client. This client's leaflets are just-bigger-than-a5 and printed on super-thick super glossy card, and they are bastards.

They are too big for a lot of letterboxes, so have to be folded in half, which never looks good. Their edges are seriously sharp so my fingers are well and truly sliced and diced. They weigh a TON so I spent the first half of the drop run bent over and moaning like Igor in Young Frankenstein.
However, the thickness and weight of them does mean that the size of one's drop bundle diminishes at pleasing speed, which can be seriously encouraging on a damp dismal chilly day. I suppose.